WND EXCLUSIVE

Rush Limbaugh: Obama's probably a bully, too

Cites 'Flipside of Feminism' in pointing out White House pay, race discrimination

Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially.

Talk radio icon Rush Limbaugh cited Suzanne Venker, author of the WND Books hit “Flipside of Feminism,” as he criticized the Barack Obama White House for pay and racial discrimination in a recent broadcast.

“There’s probably bullying that goes on in there. He’s probably one of the biggest bullies as the boss,” Limbaugh said.

The London Daily Mail reported that a 2011 annual report of White House staff salaries submitted to Congress shows an $11,000 difference between the median female employee salary and the median male employee salary.

The report said there also has been criticism that women are underrepresented in the White House. It said that of the administration’s top 20 earners, only six were women.

Andrew Stiles at the Washington Free Beacon commented: “The apparent lack of racial diversity at the Obama campaign headquarters comes at a time when the national black unemployment rate is nearly double the rate for whites.”

She cited his criticism that “3 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women” and “fewer than 20 percent of the seats in Congress are occupied by women.”

“In light of this supposed problem, you pledged legislation to close the pay gap,” she wrote.

Venker quoted Obama saying, “Right now women are a growing number of breadwinners in the household, but they’re still earning just 77 cents for every dollar a man does.”

Venker said the “77 cents mantra is provocative, to be sure. But stating that women in America earn less than men – without explaining why – either shows a marked ignorance on your part or it demonstrates your willingness to lie to the American people. What I can’t figure out is which one applies to you.”

She noted that the pay gap is not between men and women, but between married women and other men and women who spend their lives working.

“According to 2008 U.S. Census Bureau data, women ages 22 to 30 with no husband and no children earn a median $27,000 a year – 8 percent more than comparable men in the top 366 metropolitan areas. Women without children do just fine,” she wrote.

She said Obama’s claim women make less than men for the same job “is a throwaway line to promote the feminist myth that women are victims of employment discrimination. But equal pay for equal work has been the U.S. law since 1963. … If what you said were true, then bosses would hire only, or mostly, women, wouldn’t they?”

Limbaugh brought up the issue, talking about “Flipside of Feminism” as well as a book Venker has coming out early in 2013, “How to Choose a Husband.”

He quoted her letter: “The bottom line is that the pay gap exists because of a voluntary division of labor, not discrimination by a conspiracy of male chauvinists. Men simply work more hours than women. And people who work more hours – or work at more difficult, unpleasant, or riskier jobs, earn more. And they should.”

Limbaugh continued quoting, “You’re wasting valuable time and money, Mr. President. There will never be male-female pay parity so long as most women spend part of their lives caring for their children. And thank God they do.”

“The government needs to keep out of it,” Limbaugh said. “Obama wants to make this issue … his own White House is full of lower paid women, and by the way we got the photos to establish his campaign staff doesn’t look like America. His campaign staff … there’s a picture of the Obama re-election team. It’s all white.”

Limbaugh continued, “If the messiah, if the one, cannot bring about pay equity in his own office, why should anyone else be forced to do it. This is my point. These are the utopians. Obama has the power to put together his utopia right in the White House. No bullying, no discrimination, equal pay. Whatever the issues are. Yet all this disparity exists. There’s probably bullying that goes on in there. And he’s probably one of the biggest bullies in there, as the boss.

“His campaign staff doesn’t look like America. Nobody on that campaign staff looks like Al Sharpton, that I can see.”

“The cultural shift in American women’s plans for the future – in which husbands and children are presumed to be a drain on women’s social and economic identity – has resulted in many unfulfilled dreams. Millions of women needlessly face fertility battles simply because no one told them not to focus so obsessively on their careers,” Venker said.

“No one told them that getting academic degree after degree may be counterproductive if having children is part of their life plan. The result is that young women give babies no thought whatsoever until the day they decide they want one – only to realize they literally can’t have one.

“A young woman who wants to determine whether she’s living an authentic life should ask herself if the choices she has made in her life reflect her values, or whether she’s just doing what everyone around her is doing,” she wrote.